Nicola Barker - The Cauliflower

The devotees prop him up against five pillows and ten of them are fanning him in unison while Narendra (the guru ’s most beloved) gently massages his feet. Every so often the guru whispers to Naren, and also signs when his voice gives out, “Take care of them. Take care of my boys. Please — please take care of them.”

Eventually he asks to be laid down on his side. He doesn’t seem unduly bothered about the pain which must, in all candor, be perfectly excruciating.

Over recent days he keeps murmuring that the vessel which is floating on the surface of the ocean is now two-thirds full of water. Soon, very soon — and suddenly — it will fill up completely and plummet to the ocean bed. When he is dead, the guru seems to think that he will spend some considerable period of time under the surface of the sea.

He often points to his—“this”—body and whispers, “There are two people here — one is the Divine Mother, and the other is her loyal devotee. The devotee is sick.”

He no longer appears able to see the edges of things. Everything — including himself, his devotees — is now just God. Simply God. It is all God. A joyous mess of rapidly vibrating, dividing and coalescing, multicolored particles of light. How on earth might he be expected to delineate between…?

Life and death?

But there are still some hard facts remaining — some constants, some certainties: He expects to be reborn in a northwesterly direction (Canada? San Marino? Belarus? ) in approximately one hundred years’ time (an avatar , Sri Ramakrishna avows, must always submit to — nay, embrace — rebirth, for the universal benefit of mankind). The guru ’s niece Lakshmi and Sri Sarada Devi are not remotely happy at this prospect. They don’t want to be reborn! Life is too long and dreary and tough! But if the guru is reborn, will they not then also be reborn along with him? Are they not, after all, an essential constituent of his divine play here on earth? The guru is amused by their palpable sense of disquiet. Don’t they love him so dearly, he argues, that any kind of future existence — even a heavenly one — lived without him would be rendered unendurable?

At one o’clock in the morning the guru suddenly falls to one side. He emits a strange groaning sound and all the hairs on his body stand on end. Narendra releases the guru ’s feet with a traumatized cry and sprints from the room. There is a doctor present (who is also a devotee). He takes the guru ’s pulse, shakes his head, and then begins to sob.

The young man who will one day become Swami Ramakrishnananda starts to roundly chastise everybody. How can they react in this way? Isn’t the guru ’s pulse constantly slowing down when he enters a deep state of samadhi ? How can they be sure that this is any different?

The guru ’s beloved nephew and servant, Ramlal, is not present. He has spent the night in the guru ’s room at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple. He is immediately sent for. Who better understands the Master’s curious physical and mental proclivities than his nephew, after all?

( And Hriday? What of Hriday, his other nephew? Shouldn’t Hriday be here? )

Ramlal arrives in the Master’s room at around 3:00 a.m., his cheeks already streaked with tears. He inspects his uncle’s body. Like the future Swami Ramakrishnananda, he isn’t certain that the guru has passed. He asks for Vishwanath Upadhyay to be called for.

In the meantime, about twenty devotees — including Narendra — have returned to the room and are seated on the floor and loudly — sonorously — chanting: “ Hari Om! Hari Om! Hari Om! Hari Om! ” in the desperate hope of calling the Master out of his deep samadhi . This chanting continues, uninterrupted, for the next twelve long hours.

Vishwanath has arrived.

( Quick! Make way for Vishwanath! What does Vishwanath say? )

Vishwanath feels the guru ’s body and detects some tiny signs of life.

“ Hari Om! Hari Om! Hari Om! Hari Om! ”

He comes up with the idea of rubbing clarified butter along the guru’s backbone (the channel of his kundalini , the source of his prodigious spiritual energy). This is gently and lovingly done.

“ Hari Om! Hari Om! Hari Om! Hari Om! ”

Initially there are signs of life, but then, ah, then, slowly but surely, the guru ’s body starts to turn cold.

“ Hari Om! Hari Om! Hari Om! Hari Om! ”

By one or two o’clock in the afternoon (but what meaning has mere time now?), the guru ’s once bright eyes begin to close. His golden skin starts to dry and crack.

The chanting stops. Does it stop very suddenly, we wonder, or does it just gradually, imperceptibly, peter out? The tears — ah, the tears — begin to flow. He has left them. The Master is gone. Their beloved Paramahamsa is no more. The man who was Rama. The man who was Krishna. Their everything. Their all. The guru who would not be called … who would not … who could not be … The guru is dead. He is dead. He is dead.

How? But how? How? How is this possible?

Shhhh!

“The key to this room,”

He whispers, “Has to be turned

The opposite way.”

In one swift move, Sri Ramakrishna cheerfully puts to bed that eternal Hindu bugbear of whether God is with or without form:

“If God was water …

With form he’d resemble ice.

Without? Clear liquid.”

1872, at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple (six miles north of Calcutta)

Such dreadful news: Mathur Baba — our great patron, our loving benefactor, our strong shoulder to lean upon — has been cruelly snatched away from us! He has been killed by a vicious strain of typhoid fever. Each day for several weeks I have traveled to Mathur Baba’s home and sought reports on his worsening condition. My heart is so heavy. I am feeling so numb. When I think of how poor Mathur Baba has suffered my stomach twists and throbs inside my belly.

Uncle has been very calm. I keep telling Uncle that Mathur Baba pays for everything — for all of our minutest needs — but Uncle simply shrugs. The Mother has promised him, Uncle says, that he will have four main Suppliers of Provisions in his lifetime. Mathur Baba is just the first of these. Uncle is extremely confident that there will be several others.

Uncle thinks himself immune to earthly attachments. He did not trouble himself to visit Mathur Baba in his final weeks. Perhaps Uncle felt that Mathur Baba might try and make him use his supernatural powers to heal him of his vicious disease. Mathur Baba has not been afraid of making such requests in the past, and Uncle has paid a high price for indulging him.

Mathur Baba is a fine man — a great man — and wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. He loves Uncle almost as much as I do. Uncle is his great joy, his delight, his passion. But Mathur Baba can often be hotheaded, too, and dangerously impetuous in his dealings with others. On one occasion he came running to Uncle after he had ordered his guards to kill a man during the course of a violent dispute with some other landlords. They promptly followed his instructions — the man was murdered! Mathur Baba feared that he would now be imprisoned for his part in the crime. Uncle was the only person he could think of to turn to. And Uncle was furious with Mathur Baba! He was disgusted by his behavior. Mathur Baba begged Uncle on his knees to save him from his awful fate, and Uncle growled — as he always does — that he would place the matter in the hands of the Divine Mother. He stomped off to the Temple and he prayed. And Mathur Baba was kept safe. He was preserved. Who can tell if Uncle was the sole reason for this fortuitous turn of events? But since this occurrence Uncle has been quite irritable with Mathur Baba, and although he loves him dearly he worries himself about Mathur’s karma .